Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I haveexhumed, will march. You'll read them -- or they'll march. Some of themlivid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten..."

- Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

Yes, and rotten is what Beebe, Arkansas woke up to on the opening day of2011: A whole lot of rotting red-winged blackbirds. Initial estimatesput the number of dead birds littering the yards and streets of Beebeat around 5000. Not only this, but about 125 miles west in Ozark,Arkansas an estimated 100,000 dead drum fish have turned up on theshores of the Arkansas River.

So what gives?

To coincide with the mass of dead bird and fish from Arkansas, Chile also experienced a mass deathof sooty shearwater birds along the shoreline between Mela and ColmoYao counties. This comes on the heels of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake inthe Santiago Del Estero region. Likewise, on the opposite side of SouthAmerica, at least one-hundred tonsof dead fish -- mostly sardines, croaker and catfish -- have turned upon the shores of Paraná, Brazil since last Thursday. These signs do notbode well for 2011!

Now in a world such as ours, with nearly every square inch of the planetpolluted beyond living tolerance, it would seem that mass animal deathsshould not be so uncommon. After all, in the past several years we'veseen mass die-offsof honeybees, bats, dolphins, pelicans, frogs and likely other speciesthat have gone unnoticed. The cause of these mass animal deaths hasoften turned out to be specific diseases, pollutants, or somecombination of the two. The odd thing about these dead blackbirds inBeebe is that they just dropped dead in mid-flight. As Karen Rowe, anornithologist for the wildlife commission commented, "it's important to understand that a sick bird can't fly."So what exactly caused over 5,000 blackbirds to take flight in themiddle of the night then drop out of the sky? These Blackbirds arenormally sleeping at night and they have very poor eyesight in the dark,according to experts.

But not to worry, apparently the blackbird deaths pose no realmystery! According to the director of Cornell University's ornithologylab in Ithaca, New York, the most likely cause of this blackbird carnageis a "washing machine-type thunderstorm"which sucked the birds up into the sky and proceeded to soak them.Being completely soaked, this, in turn, caused them to freeze to deathin the cold December air at which point they fell from the sky.

The good director's sorry attempt to explain away the dead birds would make Charles Fort roll over in his grave for sure!

Preliminary autopsies on 17 of the up to 5,000 blackbirdsthat fell on this town indicate they died of blunt trauma to theirorgans, the state's top veterinarian told NBC News on Monday.

Their stomachs were empty, which rules out poison, Dr. George Badley said, and they died in midair, not on impact with the ground.

That evidence, and the fact that the red-winged blackbirds fly in close flocks, suggests they suffered some massive midair collision, he added. That lends weight to theories that they were startled by something.

The quote above implies that they collided with something, or somethingcollided with them and that they were "startled". Now, before jumping tothe conclusion that they must have run into a UFO or some super-secretgovernment beam weapon, let's see if there's an explanation a littlemore mundane (despite how unlikely it seems at this point).

Preliminary reportssuggested that the birds could have been killed by fireworks, lightningor even high-altitude hail from storms. As far as storms go, Beebe didsuffer a spell of bad weather earlier in the day on Friday thatincluded lightning and thunder. But the storms were far east of thecity by the time the birds were falling out of the sky at around 9-10pmon New Year's Eve.

Then we have the coinciding drum fish deaths west of Beebe along theArkansas River. Surely these underwater fish couldn't have collidedwith the same object that struck the birds. Drum fish are known asbottom feeders and fishermen know them as some of the toughest fisharound. As one fisherman wrote, "[the drum fish] is the most useless and depressing fish in the world. The thing never dies, you can stand there with a club and whack it for a long time, it'll live." In any case, we won't know what actually caused the fish deaths for another month, according a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

The two mass deaths of fish and birds in such close proximity to eachother seems too coincidental to be completely unrelated, although thecause of death would appear to be different in the case of each animal.It's almost as if whatever killed the birds set off a chain of eventsthat led to the fish deaths and maybe other phenomena as well. As ofthis writing, a similar die-off of blackbirds appears to have takenplace just three days later in Louisiana:

Labarre, Louisiana - Around 500 dead blackbirds and starlings havebeen found in Pointe Coupee Parish, according to state wildlifeofficials.

This comes after about 5,000 blackbirds and swallows were found deadaround Beebe, Arkansas on New Year's Eve. Dr. Jim LaCour with LDWF saidhe's not sure the two incidents are connected.

"It's not common, (but) we do see a few die-offs for various reasons,"said LaCour. "Yes, we need to look into it, we need to be a littlealarmed, but it's not out of the scope of things to have a die-off."

And now there are even reports of dead blackbird falling out of the sky in places as far away as Kentucky:

It appears that these dead blackbirds first showed up in Kentucky around"Christmas time", which means that this die-off process might besomething ongoing as opposed to a single collision in an isolated area.It's possible that these other bird deaths outside of Arkansas weresimply weather or disease related, but it still seems awfully strange.Could all of these birds die as a result of a collision? Andif so, what sort of 'collision' could span three states and happen inmultiple instances over a week-long period to cause such carnage?

Methane Out-Gassing

The Earth has been known to expel gasses such as C02 andMethane in large quantities at times -- sometimes to the detriment ofsurface dwelling life. This out-gassing usually happens in areas ofhigh volcanic activity, but the phenomenon is not entirely exclusive tothese regions. Regions that have high natural gas production, such asthe mid-section of Arkansas, may present other areas where out-gassingcould occur. The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812, which occurred inthe greater Arkansas region, exhibited a number of effects consistentwith the out-gassing of methane, according to the geologist andastrophysicist Thomas Gold in his paper Terrestrial Sources of Carbon and Earthquake OutGassing.

An image from “Gasland,” a documentary on problems attributed to natural-gas drilling, including flaming kitchen taps.

With the recent practice in the oil and gas industry of hydraulicfracturing, a number of residents living nearby such operations havereported "flaming water"from their water wells (the flammable component being methane). Ashumans are now opening up the Earth in rather unnatural ways, inaddition to polluting the groundwater and making a lot of their fellowpeople sick with the practice of hydraulic fracturing, could hydraulicfracturing (which is widely practiced in Arkansas for 'enhancing' gaswells) produce a higher probability of Gaia 'burping' in a given region?

While there is some suspicion that out-gassing could be the mechanismbehind certain mass bird and fish die-offs around the world, thisdoesn't appear to be the case with the blackbirds in Beebe. If webelieve the top Arkansas veterinarian, Dr. George Badley, these birdsdied as a result of some "collision". The only way that methane couldfit in with the evidence so far is if a bubble of the stuff explodedsomewhere in the atmosphere near the birds. Up to this point, however,we've seen no other evidence on the ground around Beebe that indicatesout-gassing activity. Tests for poisonous gasses and other diseaseshave turned up negative in all the reports given to the media. However,we can't rule out out-gassing as the cause of fish deaths since thosetests are currently underway at the time of this writing. If we assumethat the fish may have died as a result of methane out-gassing, is therea common link between this out-gassing and the 'collision' bird deaths?

Overhead Explosions of the Cosmic Sort

One possibility for these bird deaths that I haven't seen mentionedanywhere yet is that of a shock wave from a overhead meteor or bolideexplosion. Connecting some dots here... In the days preceding theBlackbird die-off there were several meteor sightings/experiences in theEastern US that may be consistent with a stream of cometary debrisentering Earth's atmosphere:

I came back today to two reports of a bright meteor visible fromMaryland Tuesday evening, Dec. 28, 2010. Details are still very sketchy.But 25-or-so other people from Virginia to New England spottedsomething similar at about the same time, according to fireball reportsto the American Meteor Society web site.

For a second night in a row, Maryland residents have reported large fireballs coursing through the night sky...

On Tuesday, the sky over Frederick and Hagerstown lit up like daytimewhen what must have been an epic meteor broke through the atmosphere.The Frederick Post was quickly on the story, gathering the most terrifying quote perhaps ever printed about shooting stars:

"I heard this sizzling behind me. ... I turned and looked: This hugemeteorite came. ... It was throwing off sparks and chunks," Labrushsaid. "I'm into meteorites - every time they call for meteorshowers, I'm out. I very seldom get scared - (but) I never want to seeanother one like that."

An Alva family says a chunk of ice fell from the sky and landed intheir backyard. The homeowner says the skies were clear blue and can'tfigure out how it happened.

Cyndi Smith says she is still trying to figure it all out.

"I don't know, a space ice comet! I don't have any ideas where it came from," she said.

According to one article, residents of Beebe experienced explosions just before the birds started falling:

Game and Fish Commission officers said there were reports of loud noises shortly before the birds began to fall from the sky, which may have accounted for why they were flying at such an unusual hour.

Others in the area suspected that it was 'fireworks' that caused the birds to die:

A local resident reported hearing about 20 loud booms Saturday night- which could have been fireworks or a cannon to get rid of nuisancebirds - and saw a huge flock of frantic birds when he went outside.

The big question is: Were these loud booms the result of fireworks forNew Year's celebrations, or were these explosions something of a cosmicsort like the Maryland residents witnessed days before? Perhaps one ofthe overhead explosions was enough to startle the birds out of the treesinto the sky, and then the shock wave of another struck themunexpectedly mid-flight as they frantically tried to escape the loudnoises? Birds have much more sensitive internal organs than humans do,so the shock wave could have affected only the ones in the air closestto the blast. By the time the shock wave reached the surface, it wouldhave likely dissipated enough so that any surface dwelling creatures(including humans) were unaffected and probably only heard it as a loud'thunder'.

Update (January 5, 2011)

To lend credence to the meteor explosion theory, we noticed this recent articlethat referenced a Doppler radar snapshot over Beebe about a half hourbefore the reports of blackbirds falling out of the sky poured in. Thecommentator at Maryland Weather suspects that this blip on the radar --which encompasses many square miles -- is actually a huge flock ofblackbirds in mid-flight. Perhaps this is one possibility, but such animage is also consistent with an overhead meteor explosion.

For those who don't recall, there were several meteor explosions overthe Midwest that occurred on April 14th of 2010. Fireballs lit up theskies over Madison, Wisconsin and areas along the border of Iowa andIllinois. Despite the lasting impression this made on nearby residents,these fireballs also painted a huge blip on Doppler radar as well. But perhaps this was only a huge flock of birds too...

Doppler radar over showing huge blip over Beebe, Arkansas. Is this a flock of birds, a meteor explosion, or something else?

We also have a renegade earthquake in Indianathat occurred on December 30th in an area that has never experienced anearthquake in all of recorded geological history. There are no knownfaults in the region which leads us to suspect that the earthquake mayhave been of cosmic origin too. Just as a comparison, the 1908 Tunguskaexplosion in Siberia produced a magnitude 5.0 earthquake at the nearestseismic station. It should be noted that a bolide explosion in theupper atmosphere may not necessarily be visible to people on the ground.But could this hypothetical blast (or series of blasts) be so lucky asto hit birds in all three states, and if so, why is it only blackbirds?Why don't we see large masses of other migratory birds among thefallen dead?

If an overhead bolide explosion is enough to send a shock wave into theearth, killing birds mid-flight or causing earthquake-like effects,surely such a shock wave could liberate pockets of gas within the Earthas well. This could push poisonous gasses to the surface or diffusethem into bodies of waters. Perhaps this chain of events, starting withan overhead bolide blast and proceeding to an out-gassing of methaneinto the Arkansas River is what killed all those drum fish? But if thatwas the case, why only drum fish? Whatever killed these birds and fishseems strangely selective, although this could be due to a flock or aschool being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, red-wingedblackbirds and drum fish seem to be the primary victims at this point.

Given the seemingly genetic selectivity of these bird and fishdeaths, one wonders if there isn't some mechanism going on here that wehaven't considered - something hitherto unknown by mainstream science.Considering the meteor explosion hypothesis, there is an interesting studythat was conducted on the flora and fauna (including humans)surrounding the 1908 Tunguska blast area by the Budker Institute ofNuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia. What they discovered was rathersurprising. Various species of flora had certain genetic differencesfrom similar species in the surrounding forest. These weren't any sortof sci-fi mutations, but they were nonetheless sufficiently quantifiableto be measured.

Another interesting observation they discovered was that the geneticchanges didn't necessarily occur to the flora and fauna closest to theblast site, but rather to those specimens closest to the meteor's travelpath. It was almost as if the light or sound given off by the meteorprior to the explosion had the ability to alter species' DNA in somemysterious way. The authors of the study speculate that electromagneticwaves in the VLF range were given off during the meteor's approach.These VLF waves then affected "heat shock proteins" in the nearby plantsand animals, causing lasting genetic modifications.

VLF waves have also been observed preceding major earthquake events too. Some even believe these waves can predict major earthquakes. There have also been many cases in modern literature and folkloreof animals acting crazy or trying to escape just before majorearthquakes. If VLF waves preceding earthquakes are what drive animalsto such odd behavior, perhaps it's not such a stretch to consider VLFwaves from meteors or fireballs as producing mutation or death in agiven species? Maybe meteor or comet impacts are the real evolutionaryorigin of this biological flight program found in some animals?

One has to admit this is highly speculative, however. There couldpossibly be other more plausible explanations for the selectivity ofthese mass animal deaths once more data becomes available. As mentionedabove, it could just be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrongtime.

Perhaps it is best to leave this one "open" for now and see where this Procession of the Damned ends up...

Comment: For more information on Earth's hiddenhistory of interaction with Comets and Asteroids, we encourage readersto check out Laura Knight-Jadczyk's Comets & Catastrophe series listed on the left column of SOTT.net

To see the staggering number of 'die-offs' around the world depicted on the world map (with links to the news stories) click here